


Hell thou shalt move

by concernedlily



Series: As above, so below [2]
Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Badass Harry, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rescue Missions, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 01:37:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7915423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concernedlily/pseuds/concernedlily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unfinished business.</p><p>(Sequel to If heaven thou canst not bend: all you need to know is that Eggsy became Arthur while Harry was recovering from the gunshot, and after a short adjustment period Harry became his advisor.)</p><p>TRIGGER WARNINGS: contains canon-level violence, descriptions and aftermath of Eggsy being tortured, and discussion of suicide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hell thou shalt move

“This is the reason I’m against letting Arthur into the field,” Merlin says, scratchily, and Harry adjusts his glasses for better reception. 

“Mmm,” he says. 

“Much less both of them.”

“Imagine it on your personal record,” Harry says. “ _To lose one Arthur may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness_. Status?”

“Three heat signatures round the corner. It's structurally weak here, if you use a grenade it'll take down half that wing.”

Harry nods, pleased, knowing Merlin will be slightly motion-sicknessed by the effect on his specs and quite pleased about that, too. “Good.”

“That was a warning, not a recommendation!”

“It's not where Eggsy's being held?” Harry demands.

There's a brief pause while Merlin checks the biological tracker readout. “No.”

“Good,” Harry says again, and chucks the primed lighter. 

***

Harry might not be quite the lethal whirlwind he was in his younger, full-time knight years - but in his suit in the very latest Kingsman worsted he is, at least, extravagantly bulletproof. He cuts through the building without undue ruthlessness, but without any mercy, either.

This group of ne’er-do-wells, human trafficking flavour, have had Eggsy for a day and a half.

And before they’d finally got up to Eggsy’s face, and beaten him hard enough to ruin the glasses he’d been wearing, Harry had watched them make Eggsy scream.

***

He's not even being worked on. Eggsy is the head of the most effective, well-financed, powerful secret intelligence agency in existence, with knowledge in his precious bonce that could ruin the world in the wrong hands, and they've looked at his youth and cocky attitude, tortured him for fun, and thrown him away in a dirty cell. 

He's not the only one in what Harry can only describe as dungeons, dank and stinking of sweat and blood and misery, but Harry steels himself to ignore the others. A full extraction team will be here shortly, with medics and people trained to deal with trauma, and it won't help Harry or Eggsy or the victims themselves for Harry to let them out now and have a pack of terrified, confused people underfoot while he cleans out the rest of the cellar.

“Merlin,” he says quietly. The mike built into his lapel is sensitive enough to catch the faintest speech, more than sensitive enough to catch the ambient sound, the sobs and groans of pain and fear.

“Next turn on the left, there’s a guard outside,” Merlin says, just as quiet. “Lancelot’s twenty minutes away. Extraction team half an hour.”

“Lancelot needn’t have wasted her time,” Harry says absently.

“She was already in the air to handle it,” Merlin says with his deadliest calm. “Gwen shouldn’t have told you where he was, sending you off half-cocked like this. We’ll talk about it when you get back.”

“What’s the point?” Harry murmurs. “I’d do it again. Nothing I was doing in Germany can’t wait.” More gladhanding and bullying and, when necessary, a little light blackmailing, pulling strings behind the scenes of the slow implementation of a new cross-European central banking system. As part of Kingsman’s new drive to try to improve lives systemically rather than in extremis, as it were, it’s important but not urgent, and the Council will cope if his report is a couple of days late.

“Arthur’s bloody shadow,” Merlin mutters and then in his normal voice, “guard is moving - on my mark, Galahad.”

Harry swings round the corner, umbrella up and open, set to stun. The guard is already turning to face him, mouth opening into a hilariously perfect O of shock and outrage, and Harry recognises him. He’d been in the corner of the room with a gun trained on Eggsy, lazily, chatting to his friend and grinning and yawning as Eggsy’s breath came ragged and in pain, and Merlin doesn’t comment any further as Harry spins the Rainmaker to bullets and fires.

He kicks the body out of the way. The door is thick wood, but barred rather than locked. Harry lifts the three heavy latches, rust crumbling orange onto his fingers. He calls, “Arthur,” softly, as he opens it and steps inside.

The room looks empty and then Eggsy is there, falling away from the wall behind the door where he was lain in wait. They stand, still poised for a fight, for a spellbound moment, only milliseconds if they weren’t running on hyperaware spy time, and then Harry is pulling him in as he comes clutching and exhausted and furious into Harry’s arms.

“You’re all right,” Harry murmurs, and then, unbidden, “darling boy, _Eggsy_ -”

The relief is so strong he almost doesn’t recognise it; everything he’s feeling is so much more powerful than he’s known before, like everything before Eggsy was merely through a glass darkly. His own rage towards Eggsy’s abductors, the people who had dared to hurt him, was black and deadly and everything and now it’s covered by the rushing rise of tenderness, like bubbles in champagne, revenge obliterated in the need to take care of his leader, his love.

So it’s a good job revenge has already been taken, really. Eggsy is vital and shivering in his arms as Harry guides him out of the cell, pressing Eggsy’s head to his neck fastidiously as they pass the bodies Harry had left behind him on the way down.

“I’m all right,” Eggsy mutters, his feet weak under him. “Harry. Harry, you’re here, I’m - I’m all right.”

It’s almost certainly meant to be a cocky statement of Eggsy’s absolute all-rightness, reassurance to them both, but it comes out as a wavering question. 

Harry rubs the blood away where his own hands have marked Eggsy, kisses him there on his temple, on a swollen blue-black bruise. “I’m here,” he says quietly. “You’re all right.”

“The other rooms,” Eggsy says, trying to look around, sensitive soul. Harry slides an arm around his waist. He feels very, very unwilling to let Eggsy go. “Fuck, it’s rank down here. How many?”

“Lots,” Harry says. “Lancelot and an extraction team are on their way.”

“We should wait,” Eggsy says. He’s swaying where he stands, even with Harry’s arm safely round him, and his voice is faint, but he’s still Harry’s brave idiot, eyes glittering in the dim light with fervour, or possibly merely fever, Harry isn’t quite sure which. He looks vampiric, pale and sweating and shaking, blood smeared down his chin from a bitten-through lip and a livid hole where his bottom right molar should have been. “Help them.”

Harry says, “They won’t need our help. Come on.” The urge to get Eggsy _out_ is almost overpowering, fierce protectiveness like - well, the only thing Harry has ever known anywhere close to it is having Mr Pickle’s precious puppy life put into his hands and told this was his responsibility now. 

There’s a clattering noise above them. Harry readies the Rainmaker, tries to disentangle himself and prop Eggsy carefully against the wall, unable to stop himself taking another careful stroke down Eggsy’s cheek, another deep breath of his disgusting, wonderful scent. He says, “I’ll take care of this.”

“The fuck you will,” Eggsy says. “Gun.”

“No,” Harry says, automatically.

“ _Gun_ , Galahad,” Eggsy says, striving for something of his usual authority. His hand held out to Harry is rock solid still, the ring and little fingers hanging broken and swollen.

Compromise. Harry rubs the material of the Rainmaker between his fingers for a moment, checking the integrity, and hands it over, both cover and easier to shoot without steadying it with the whole hand. He pulls his handgun from his shoulder holster and reloads it quickly, grabs his back-up pistol from the strap on his calf.

“Stay close to me,” he says quietly. Eggsy nods; shuts his eyes and sways in, urgently, and Harry kisses him, both of them armed and hands-full, unable to touch beyond the slow easy contact of his mouth on Eggsy’s. He’s going to catch hell enough from Merlin anyway, he might as well go out in style.

The noise from above is getting louder. Harry raises his gun and gestures Eggsy to fall in behind him, umbrella poised to fall into covering both their heads if necessary. He doesn’t turn to check Eggsy’s positioning. 

They’ve never fought together before. Harry’s thought about it, and at some length, to be perfectly honest. His own smooth brutality and Eggsy’s acrobatic, beautiful viciousness joined together against their enemies; against Kingsman’s enemies. In the gym, yes, of course, sparring against one another in bouts that rapidly turn more foreplay than function, and as a pair against other agents who need teaching a lesson about overconfidence: staff drift in to spectate, when word gets round the Arthurs are on the rampage against some peevish undercooked colleague. 

But that’s just it, for the field: the Arthurs are never allowed out together.

And there is nothing like the field. Not for Harry, and not for Eggsy, either, and Harry revels in it, as they blow through the few guards rampaging down so easily it feels choreographed. It’s only a few minutes, and then the vestiges of the defending forces are pincered, Lancelot’s whirling stilettos (the daggers rather than the shoes, although Harry’s had reason to admire Roxy’s ability to make do in a pinch) and then the Kingsman extraction team overwhelming the security within minutes.

All the time, Eggsy at his back, Harry’s Rainmaker in Eggsy’s hands covering them both. If only Harry didn’t know those hands are only failing to shake because of Eggsy’s iron will behind them; if only it weren’t for that, it would have been bliss.

As it is, as the last guard hits the floor, dead or merely defeated, the umbrella hits the floor too, still open. Harry ignores it; he catches Eggsy, instead.

***

Eggsy doesn't need surgery but after the icing and setting and stitching medical wants to keep him overnight anyway, getting a powerful slug of antibiotics intravenously to try to stave off infection in his gums and beds of his fingernails and the various cuts and scrapes. Eggsy nods and lies back in the hospital bed, looking wan and irritable, so he must be feeling genuinely terrible; to a man the agents usually yowl and fight to be allowed at least to go up to their own quarters, if not actually home. 

The flight back had been unpleasant. Eggsy had sat alone, sipping water, being brave, until Helen had closed the door to the cockpit and Roxy had announced brightly she was going to have a doze and pretended to drift off in the flatbed at the front of the plane. Then Eggsy had finally crawled into Harry's armchair with him, into Harry's arms with his face pressed into Harry's neck, his breath stirring Harry's skin there hot and light and damp, and Harry had closed his eyes and thought of nothing the whole time back but the sweaty, familiar scent of Eggsy's hair under his nose. 

Eggsy is clean now, resplendent in Harry's dressing gown under the pristine white sheets. He's strained-pale against the kaleidoscope of storm-cloud bruising, the rose red bloom of his mouth tender and fresh, like it gets when Harry presses him into the bed to kiss for lazy long mornings, and watching Harry with open gritty-eyed hunger. 

Harry shifts out of the nurse’s way and rests his head back against the overstuffed visitor’s chair. He's desperate for her to leave, to assuage his own longing for Eggsy's skin. They go weeks without even seeing one another other than over Kingsman comms, sometimes, and now the thirty minutes it's been since the last time he had Eggsy's hand under his has been unbearable. 

“Harry,” Eggsy says, thready with exhaustion, and Harry smiles at him without opening his eyes. 

“Can you bring Galahad his migraine tablets, please?” Eggsy says to Sarah and a moment later Harry feels someone near him. He nods briefly, opens his eyes and lets her look into them. The edges of his vision are fading out into black. 

He and Eggsy both get medicine, then, and then they're alone and Eggsy is moving, hissing when he pulls at the IV, and Harry toes off his shoes and takes off his jacket and climbs into the space Eggsy has made for him in the hospital bed and into Eggsy's arms, tight-fit and urgent and safe. 

“Look at the state of us,” Eggsy says, softly, and Harry squeezes him in and says with his voice doing the absolute least shaking he can manage, “I'm glad you're here.”

***

Harry startles awake, into strict stillness and silence. He’s not on the job, though, so he settles as soon as he recognises the low hum of medical equipment and medical people. Harry’s migraine has settled into a nagging headache, easily ignorable. They’re in a rather awkward position, accommodating Eggsy’s IV drip and injuries, Eggsy halfway on top of Harry and nestled into his collarbone, and Harry's arm is numb.

None of that has woken him. It was Eggsy himself, his breathing ragged and his skin damp with cold sweat as he trembles in his sleep. Harry bites down on his lip, hard, and strokes Eggsy’s hair, wanting to ease him out of the bad dream, not least because Eggsy had been an unpredictable sleeper even before he’d added the training and healthy paranoia of a knight.

There’s an odd snuffling from Eggsy’s side of the bed, whining and pitiful. “No,” Harry says firmly. “JB, basket.” A small, resentful doggy silence, and then JB is dragging back to his dog bed in the corner of the room.

“Wha’?” Eggsy says, groggy. His voice is sharp with fear and Harry closes his eyes, breathes steadily under Eggsy and keeps stroking his hair.

“It’s the middle of the night,” he says quietly. “Go back to sleep.”

“Yeah,” Eggsy mumbles. He shifts, restless, and Harry helps him to sit up without messing around the IV too much, finds Eggsy's painkillers and pops two tablets in Eggsy's mouth, silently hands over his own glass of water when Eggsy drains his and still tips it up for more.

“Sorry if I was…” Eggsy says. He’s cradling the glass, rubbing one thumb against it until it squeaks, and Harry takes it out of his hands. Then he starts scratching around the site of the IV and Harry leans in and kisses him, slowly and deeply, pushing up into it when Eggsy slides a hand immediately into his hair.

Eggsy hisses when Harry inadvertently tongues over the sore gap where his tooth is missing and Harry murmurs, “Sorry,” goes back to teasing Eggsy’s lips gently, the softest and sweetest kiss possible, careful of Eggsy’s bruised face and swollen mouth. 

Eggsy is docile under Harry's hands, responsive, and the littlest things feel precious: the thick softness of Eggsy's hair when Harry strokes it back from his forehead, the little sighs he makes when Harry presses kisses along his jaw and down his throat, the way he slips his hand under Harry's t-shirt and rests his hand warmly on the small of Harry's back. 

There's a low simmer of arousal in Harry's belly, and Eggsy is starting to move against him with intent, the medication sweeping away the pain and making room for pleasure. He rests his hand over Eggsy's dick, lightly, just checking, feeling the heat and hardness there and when Eggsy chokes out a moan he starts to rub, tiny circles stimulating the soft cotton of Eggsy's pajamas on his cock, finding the sensitive head and trailing his fingertips there until the pajamas are damp to his touch. 

“You don't have to… I ain't gonna be up to much,” Eggsy says, but his whole body is rising up to Harry, yearning, as urgent as when they were brand new and Eggsy hadn't quite believed this was his. 

“It doesn't have to be much,” Harry says gently. He adjusts, makes his hand a loose inviting offer, and then for once it doesn't quite feel enough; he wants to hear it from Eggsy, he wants Eggsy's voice. He says, “Do you want me to carry on?”

“Harry, _yeah_ , yeah,” Eggsy says and then he's pulling Harry down, wriggling them on their sides on the bed to kiss and kiss and kiss, half-hard cocks in their pajama bottoms brushing and pressing and good. 

It isn't enough. He needs more of Eggsy, everything. He kneels up to strip Eggsy, Eggsy moving for him and then lying still, looking up at Harry with desire-darkened eyes. His hand is outflung as if in passion but the t-shirt he was wearing hangs off his wrist there, unable to come off properly with Eggsy attached to the IV by the side of the bed, and that's what makes Harry furious, that tiny offence in a myriad of offences boot-stomped black and blue on Eggsy's body, that he can't even have Eggsy properly naked. Most of the time Harry likes that they have Kingsman between them - that they have Arthur - but just now it feels like an intrusion into the purity of what they have together. 

“Harry,” Eggsy says again and he pulls Harry down with his free hand, kisses him again, and Harry murmurs into his mouth, promises of love and homecoming and never being hurt again, promises he can't keep. 

Eggsy is warm and living and generous under Harry's hands, sinks his hand into Harry's hair and lets Harry kiss over him. Harry leaves a mark on his hip, bite-worried pink, meaning to bruise, meaning Eggsy to have one place on him claimed back for them from his torturers, and Eggsy lets him do that too, groans and spreads his legs and lets Harry feel his cock hardening fully against Harry's throat.

By the time he gets to Eggsy's cock Eggsy is restless and making little hitched sounds of need, and the utter hell of that first moment after Gwen had told him what was happening has faded, the footage of Eggsy being hurt is no longer waiting for Harry when he closes his eyes. 

He sucks Eggsy's cock for a long time. It’s comforting, to have his mouth filled with Eggsy’s sensitive prick, to have the musky scent of Eggsy surrounding him when he sinks exquisitely all the way down and holds there, cock in his throat and his nose pressed to curling hair. Eggsy finally relaxes under his hands, caressing Eggsy’s hips and chest and thighs while he attends leisurely to Eggsy’s cock; no teasing, no tricks, just slow and thorough, pulling Eggsy into a surrendering spiral down into the moment.

The climb up to climax is so gradual it surprises both of them when Eggsy falls over the edge. Harry welcomes the pull on his hair, the small pain of it, the strained pleasure in Eggsy’s single cry, the warmth of come on his tongue. His own cock throbs in sympathy, pressed and rutted against the firmness of the med-wing bed. He pulls himself up, takes Eggsy back into his arms and soothes Eggsy’s head onto his shoulder, moves Eggsy’s hand gently when Eggsy gropes at him clumsily. This, Eggsy close and satiated near to sleep, is all he needs.

“It’s all right,” he murmurs, stroking Eggsy’s back when Eggsy makes a sad grumble at not being able to curl up properly in Harry’s arms, IV in the way. “Go to sleep, love.”

“You here?” Eggsy mumbles, drowsy-eyed. He clutches at Harry’s pajama top and Harry covers his hand, feeling stripped back to the bones, to his beating full heart.

“I’m here,” he says softly, and he is; he stays awake the rest of the night, guarding Eggsy’s rest.

***

“What happened here?” Harry says, surveying the wreckage of Eggsy's bedside table, covered in newspapers and Lucozade bottles and picked-clean grape stalks. 

“Giles and Jasminder came in to cheer me up,” Eggsy says. Their Bors, a university friend of Roxy’s, and Giles’ favourite. Harry himself doesn't have a particular protégée in the new crop, if one doesn't count Eggsy, which Harry doesn't. They ought to have a new Galahad, really, Harry no longer fulfilling the role of ordinary field agent, but he's worn the name for thirty-five years, closing in on the record; he's not keen to give it up. Eggsy pokes at the newspapers with a rueful grin and adds, “He's teaching her to do cryptic crosswords, I couldn't make head or bloody tail.”

“Don’t bother, they’re boring as fuck,” Harry says. He perches on the bed, leans forward to kiss Eggsy’s forehead, breathing him in, resisting Eggsy's crafty attempts to pull him down. “Sorry, darling, mustn't. Merlin's sending me back to Germany, but I'll be back tonight.”

“Yeah, he said. I should be back in my room by then,” Eggsy says, hopefully. “You can come and tuck me in.”

“I'd love to,” Harry says. “All right, off I go. Be good.”

“Harry,” Eggsy says, and Harry sits back down, caught by the seriousness in his tone. “I got to talk to you about something first. Merlin didn't just want to warn me you was going to Germany.”

“Am I in trouble, Arthur?” Harry says slowly. “I don't care, frankly. Not coming to you would've been unthinkable.”

“No, Christ,” Eggsy says. “I mean, maybe with Merlin, I dunno.” He reaches for Harry, hasty and instinctive, and Harry captures his hand, rubs his thumb very gently over the thick-wrapped white bandage over Eggsy's fingertip. He wants to raise Eggsy's hand to his mouth almost as compulsively as he'd wanted to get on that fucking plane two days ago, and so he does, Eggsy's gaze soft and fond over their joined hands as Harry kisses him there. 

“What, then?” he says. He doesn't give Eggsy back his hand, cradles it between both of his in his lap instead, and Eggsy tickles his palm gently. 

“He wanted to talk to me about this,” Eggsy says quietly. He leans over and picks up a small vial Harry hadn't noticed on the bedside table, amongst the other detritus. Harry takes it, watching Eggsy and the wobbling mulish look on his face until he can't avoid looking down at it. Small, white, apparently innocuous.

“A tooth with a cyanide capsule,” he says slowly. “How very Cold War.”

Eggsy half-smiles; he's searching Harry's face anxiously, and Harry has no reaction to give him: he feels cold and grim, right down to his core. The idea of Eggsy, alone, afraid, desperate enough to bite down -

"Merlin was gonna make it flashy, but he says there ain't too much you can do with it,” Eggsy says, but Harry can't bring himself to share the joke the way he usually does. 

"And you're set on this?" he says. 

Eggsy closes his eyes, so briefly it's only because Harry knows him so well that he can see the reaction there. Eggsy has learnt, so bloody well; he doesn't fidget these days, every perfect inch the gentleman, and Harry cherishes every dropped aitch and bad humour and yawn that are his alone. "Harry… we both know I've been lucky so far."

"You've been _good_ ," Harry corrects. "There's no reason to assume this will happen again. You can resume your fieldwork -"

"I can't," Eggsy says, and his simple resolve is far worse to deal with than an argument would've been. "This is the answer, Harry. I don't want to be out of fieldwork before I'm 27."

"Do you want to be dead before you're 27?" Harry snaps, and Eggsy pulls in a painful breath and pushes into his arms. 

Harry closes his eyes and holds him. The level of risk they face - the daily awareness of it used to be a faultline running under his life, but when it's Eggsy it's a looming dark stormcloud instead.

“Not yet,” he says, lets it be pleading. “Not while you're still - give it some time before you decide.”

“Yeah,” Eggsy says. His fingers are at Harry's collar, pulling at his tie, opening the top buttons until Harry can feel the words against the hollow of his throat. “The socket has to heal, anyway, before they can… so there's time, anyway.”

Harry's glasses buzz subtly against his temple. The plane is waiting. 

“Thank you,” he says. They kiss, slow and deep, and this time when Harry presses his tongue near the gap Eggsy doesn't flinch. 

END


End file.
